


Entangled

by katybar



Series: Touch and Touchability [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexuality Spectrum, Bittersweet Ending, M/M, Non-Sexual Touching, True Love, profound asexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 01:23:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4202586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katybar/pseuds/katybar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before all this started, John had had fantasies. He’d known even then they were fantasies, and he’d never expected them to come true, but he’d never expected them to come so far false, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Entangled

They have a ritual after a case is done, and the more dangerous, the better.  It used to involve stairwells and giggling and sidelong glances.  Now it is this.  It is John Watson pulling on Sherlock’s sleeve, tugging him up the 17 steps.  It is Sherlock carefully removing the greatcoat, gloves in the pockets, scarf smoothed around the collar, while John tosses his jacket on a chair.  It is John’s eyes, dark as he forces himself not to beg, not to rush Sherlock.  Then it is more steps to John’s room, to the newly comfortable mattress that John got after their ritual changed.  Sherlock won’t sleep there, but sometimes he will stay until John is asleep, and sometimes that’s almost as good.  

John toes off his shoes, and eyes Sherlock, calculating, before he pulls him down onto the bed, arranging his long limbs like half a cocoon, and climbing carefully into the hollow.  Sherlock allows himself to be manipulated and settled and arranged into something comfortable for John.  And John settles in to him quietly.  It’s not that they don’t do giggling anymore, because they do, but now is not the time.  Now John curls into Sherlock’s chest and pulls Sherlock’s free arm heavily across his belly.  

For the first few minutes his breathing is tight with the artificiality of the situation he has created. They have not talked much about this, but John doesn’t need a trail of tiny clues and a brilliant reveal to know that Sherlock finds kissing grotesque and genitalia ludicrous.  This, on the other hand, this is something Sherlock can at least tolerate.  Sherlock owes him that much, thinks John, and he hates himself right now for the thought.  But molecule by molecule, Sherlock radiates heat through the layers of clothing, warming the small of his back and the backs of his thighs, and Sherlock’s breath seeps rhythmically under the collar of his shirt.  

Before all this started, John had had fantasies.  He’d imagined Sherlock awakened under his hand and his mouth, ragged breaths and stifled groans and the long arch of his back.  He’d known even then that they were fantasies, and he’d never expected them to come true, exactly, but he’d never expected them to come so far false, either.

Six minutes in (that’s John’s military training) it’s a relief when he feels the closeness of Sherlock’s body permeate his own. John gives himself fifteen minutes like this.  Longer than that and it’s anyone’s guess whether Sherlock is willing to stay, and John has no desire to be abandoned in his own bed.  He has fantasies now too, and he resolutely refuses to think about whether these fantasies will come true or false.  He fantasizes about Sherlock’s hand stroking his arm, fingers carding his hair, lips pressing a kiss into the back of his neck.  At times like this, his skin prickles with need, like being covered with minute pin feathers itching to be soothed.  

And yes, Sherlock has tried.  It’s a painful irony that the most observant man in London has, like every other person on the planet, a blind spot -- and that blind spot is this.  Showing Sherlock how to touch or be touched has been like lecturing a deaf man on harmony.   Sherlock can use a hundred and one tells to ferret out who had been in whose bed or on whose kitchen floor the night before, but when it comes to applying knowledge, he can only copy John blindly and only if John does it first and it always skirts  the edge of either grotesque or ludicrous, and sometimes both at once.

After nine minutes, John closes his eyes and wills himself not to press back into Sherlock’s arranged embrace.  It doesn’t end well, he knows this from experience.  His mind runs languidly through the possibilities once again.  He could take a lover, he could do the hooking up lark, he could pioneer the practice of tantric masturbation… what he can’t do, or won’t do, is leave.  There is some alchemy of brilliance and tenderness, friendship and brotherhood and true love, that he has never found before, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to give it up because of this.

After thirteen minutes, John is bemused, as usual, to find that he is smiling into Sherlock’s sleeve, his breath deep, his arms and legs like honey.   “I love you, you prat,” he murmurs apropos of pretty much nothing, and Sherlock hums back at him but doesn’t speak.  He is thinking about the necessity of curling away, the logistics of removing himself, the desirability of a cup of tea, when he feels a shift in the mattress, and then Sherlock’s leg settles on his hip, knee over his thigh, long foot between his calves.  “That’s nice,” murmurs John, tipping his head back, but he gets no response from Sherlock.  So he settles back down, entangled, because a cup of tea can certainly wait.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this about 2 years ago. It's hard for me to post. Why is it hard for me to post? No idea.


End file.
